D&D 5E Worst Classes Level 1.

[J-H]

I played a mostly-1st-level one-shot a while ago. My monk could consistently hit with a d6+2 or 3 of damage.
The barbarian would hit for a lot more damage...if he hit. I believe he didn't land a single blow until he hit level 2 and got Reckless Attack. The dice were against him.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

(1d8+3) + (1d4+3) = 7.5 + 5.5 = 13

Rogue does 6.5 + 3.5 + 3.5 = 13.5 with two short swords and sneak attack.

Monks suck. First level is their best level, and they're STILL not the best even at that level! And most of their subclasses, they only get worse at higher levels relative to other classes.

I like the concept of a monk. I just think they're vastly underpowered in 5e and should see a power boost.

I guess doing the 2nd most damage of any character at 1st level "sucks". Maybe we needed to define terms at the beginning.
(also note, the sneak attack can't be used EVERY round like the unarmed attack).

 

[FrogReaver]

You then edited your comment AFTER I HAD ALREADY RESPONDED TO YOU WITH A QUOTE to act like you said "most" instead of "any". Which was damn disingenuous of you. You then tried to claim someone else said what you said, which was doubly disingenuous. What's up Frog?

It’s ironic this was added after I already quoted you as well.

honestly though we were both making changes before we knew the other responded. At least I was and I’ll give you the benefit of a doubt there.

Zard did actually make the claim that monks do the most damage. you challenged him on it and initially seemed to think I was arguing for it given your response to me. When you brought it up again I honestly thought you were getting us and our positions confused.

I do understand why you read my words the way you did. Certainly not how they were intended and not the only way to take them IMO.

 

[NotAYakk]

Fighter 1 TWF is 13 DPR, identical to monk. And Fighter gets a 6.5 short rest heal.

With 16/16 dex/wis a monk hits 16 AC... which a fighter gets with 75 gp.

Thr fighter has 16 str, 16 con and has 13 HP, while the monk has 9 because she had to put all her points in dex/wis to get AC.

 

[FrogReaver]

Fighter 1 TWF is 13 DPR, identical to monk. And Fighter gets a 6.5 short rest heal.

With 16/16 dex/wis a monk hits 16 AC... which a fighter gets with 75 gp.

Thr fighter has 16 str, 16 con and has 13 HP, while the monk has 9 because she had to put all her points in dex/wis to get AC.

if we are talking dex monk vs str fighter That givesthe monk alot of other benefits.

 

[Mistwell]

My quote in both cases was 100% correct.

Nevermind, see below.

 

[Mistwell]

I guess doing the 2nd most damage of any character at 1st level "sucks".

What I said was, "First level is their best level, and they're STILL not the best even at that level! "

And then I said it only gets worse after that.

SO yeah, if your best level is still not the best at that thing, that's a bad thing. If you get worse after your best, and your best wasn't the best even in your niche, that's an issue.

Monks need a power boost. They should have double the Ki points. I really think it's the Ki points that messes them up. I have no idea why the designers thought that was enough to power the kinds of things they power. In fact I have a sneaky suspicion, which I can't prove, that when they wrote all those abilities which cost so many Ki points, their model was getting more Ki points than they ended up with and they never went back and made the right adjustment to the ability costs.

 

[Mistwell]

It’s ironic this was added after I already quoted you as well.

honestly though we were both making changes before we knew the other responded. At least I was and I’ll give you the benefit of a doubt there.

Zard did actually make the claim that monks do the most damage. you challenged him on it and initially seemed to think I was arguing for it given your response to me. When you brought it up again I honestly thought you were getting us and our positions confused.

I do understand why you read my words the way you did. Certainly not how they were intended and not the only way to take them IMO.

OK, fair enough. Shall we talk about the monk now? DO you think they hold up over mid levels and high levels?

 

[FrogReaver]

"I think you just proved they do a lot more damage than what any character with a shirtsword can do." That was you who wrote that, not Zard, and not your fake "edit" to cover your tracks.

1) I had already showed another character with shortswords, a rogue, could outdamage them so the 'any' character claim was wrong (which I assume is why you edited your comment after we had already talked about it to change that part), 2) the monk didn't do "a lot more" damage in any of the cases so that part of your claim was wrong, and 3) no shirtswords were harmed in the making of this post, so that was wrong too

You were not 100% correct. You're continuing to deny what everyone here saw. It's silly.

Do you agree at least they don't do well as levels increase, relative to other classes? Or you still want to talk about the silliness?

moving on is a good move that I can respect. Let’s agree to disagree.

my monks have been very effective - albeit we tend to play in featless games with rules that make play more deadly and We tend to play tier 1 and tier 2 mostly.

In a featless game in tiers 1 and 2 a monk is very comparable to a battlemaster in terms of damage output.

I’ve not really evaluated them in tier 3 but I’m willing take an educated guess to be that’s close too.

feats definitely make fighters better - rendering monks essentially stunners instead of damage dealers.

Stunning is great but 5e tends to make solos a bit too weak

 

[Iry]

I think the Barbarian is the weakest class at 1st level. They don't have much to contribute to the exploration and social pillars except using rage to tank physical environmental hazards. And they usually don't use rages for that.